1. Field
This invention relates generally to media, particularly to a system and method to distribute online video.
2. Related Arts
Watching movies is an entertainment of choice for most people. With a good quality television set equipped with a VCR or DVD player, people can enjoy home theatre experience rivaling that of a cinema, all in the comfort of a living room.
People used to buy or rent movies from local merchants. With the advent of the Internet, many merchants are deploying innovative ways to deliver movies to enthusiasts. For example, NetFlix offers online movie rental and delivers the movies via postal service. Motivated by the success of online music download, e-commerce merchants such as Walmart.com, Amazon.com and iTunes are trotting out movie download purchase as well.
At the same time, storing personal media content, such as videos and photos, in the Internet has become popular, particularly among the young generation. Internet portals offer storage for this purpose. This allows easy access of personal media content, such as viewing from different locations or sharing with friends.
In one example, a college student Keith stores his videos in YouTube so that he can access his collection when he is in school, and when he visits his parents across town during weekends. He purchases a movie from Walmart.com and wants to store his videos in YouTube. Keith finds the upload procedure inconvenient and slow, taking over 3 hours to complete.
In another example, Bret rents a movie from an online merchant. He plans to watch the movie in his girlfriend's apartment after work. After downloading the movie from the online merchant, Bret has to copy the movie to a DVD disc so that he can bring it along. Bret wishes there is a convenient way for the merchant to deliver the movie to his online media storage so they can watch the movie from her apartment.
In one more example, Roger downloads a movie he just purchased to his hard-drive based digital video recorder. The recorder is connected to the big screen television in the family room. There is no easy way for Roger to watch the movie from his bedroom.
The above illustrates a need for a system and method to distribute online video for easy personal access.